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Atlanta Drone Solutions Startup Nabs $7 Million In Series A

Pointivo, an Atlanta-based startup that makes artificial intelligence (AI) 3D analytics technology, has closed a Series A funding round of $7 million. The round was led by BIP Capital with participation from Blue Lagoon Capital and Thirteen Castles, among others.

Founded in 2014 to commercialize technology developed by co-founder and CTO Dr. Habib Fathi, the company offers a 3D Intelligence Platform that automates the manual processes around inspecting and assessing physical assets in the insurance, roofing, solar, telecommunications and energy industries.

The software processes imagery from drones, manned aerial and mobile cameras and automatically extracts information about structures in a scene, resulting in significant cost savings.

Pointivo provides API access to its cloud-based platform. It has partnered with drone platform companies and manned aerial imagery providers to enable their customers to solve business problems without human intervention.

"Our ability to integrate AI and computer vision to automatically extract valuable 3D information about a scene sets us apart," said Dan Ciprari, CEO and co-founder of Pointivo, in a statement. "By offering access to our platform via a simple API call, we enable our partners to provide automated solutions to differentiate themselves in their industries. They can solve real business problems economically and achieve the promise of drones and aerial-based imagery powering normal business operations."

In addition to the funding raised, Pointivo was awarded more than $1.5 million through the Small Business Innovation Research program and at least $1.4 million in other seed and venture rounds. The startup was awarded "Best in Show" among the Technology Association of Georgia's Top 10 Innovative Technology Companies and a top Startup to Watch by Venture Atlanta.

A growing number of drone analytics companies aim to deploy across industry sectors.

SenseHawk is a U.S-India startup that specializes in using data captured by drones to develop insight for projects within the solar industry. Cloud-based drone analytics provider Propeller works with the mining, waste management and construction sectors.

There have been some high-profile failures. This past fall, the San Francisco-based drone startup Airware suddenly ceased operations, despite having raised $118 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google's GV and Kleiner Perkins.